Decentralized Identification

The WWW is already tantalizingly close to providing a decentralized infrastructure for representing trust.
Through the use of prose and hyperlinks, humans can express highly refined trust relationships between
entities on the WWW. For example, "I've completed several satisfactory transactions through
e-gold." Accurately expressing these relationships
is one of the primary aims of human language. Software agents can similarly express trust relationships
using their equivalent of prose, the application protocol.

Reliance upon the DNS is the stumbling block that prevents these trust relationship languages from achieving
the "weblike, decentralized" qualifier. This point too was noted by Tim Berners-Lee in "Weaving the Web":

"For all its decentralized growth, the Web currently has one centralized Achilles' heel by which it can all
be brought down or controlled."

When you dereference a URL, the keepers of the DNS and PKI determine which web server responds to your
request. To make the WWW a "weblike, decentralized infrastructure" for representing trust, we need a way for
WWW entities to directly link to each other. YURLs, such as httpsy URLs, enable
linking without indirection through centralized authorities like the DNS or PKI.

Since referring to other entities is such a common task, its mechanisms are often overlooked. Many also
assume that the vagaries and failings of existing identification mechanisms are intrinsic to the task and
therefore inevitable. These assumptions are often wrong. For example, the "phishing" attacks that currently
plague the WWW are not intrinsic to online communication; they are a symptom of a poorly conceived
identification mechanism (see Trust Management for Humans). The documents presented
here explore what referral is, and how the WWW can be adapted to do it well.